Panel Discussion Between Placeholder VC and Ton Ventures
Insights from Gurnoor Singh Narula (Placeholder VC) & Inal Kardan (Ton Ventures)
Our 5th Panel Discussion brought together insights from Gurnoor Singh Narula (Placeholder VC) and Inal Kardan (Ton Ventures). We deep dived on how to distinguish real builders from hype-chasers, the most exciting trends shaping the space, and the critical role of privacy and data in AI’s evolution. Here are the highlights:
How do you evaluate real builders versus hype-driven trend chasers in a bull market?
Inal Kardan (Partner at Ton Ventures):
“Investing in early-stage teams with valuations around 5-10 million, with a strong emphasis on evaluating their intentions and long-term commitment. Prioritizing founding teams that include highly skilled technical members, ensuring at least one founder has strong product and technical expertise. Recognizing that while some teams succeed purely through marketing and community-building, the focus remains on those with real technical capabilities. Long-term vision is a key factor in investment decisions, avoiding teams that seek quick financial gains or short-term optimizations. Engaging in multiple discussions with founders to deeply understand their mindset, motivations, and strategic direction. Rejecting deals that promote immediate liquidity with no lockups, ensuring alignment with sustainable growth and innovation within the industry”.
Gurnoor Singh Narula (Placeholder VC):
“Bull markets bring good vibes, new entrants, and active builders. Venture capital evaluates companies on a five to seven-year timescale, despite the industry's cyclical nature. Investors seek companies with a technical advantage to attract users or unlock new market sectors for long-term sustainability. In hyped-up markets, valuations are often inflated, requiring careful balancing when making investment decisions. Investors must be more critical in bull markets, considering not only technical expertise and product legitimacy but also price sensitivity and sustainability. The same investing principles apply in bear markets, but bull markets demand extra caution regarding valuation and long-term support. Bull markets also shift towards a risk-off attitude, making venture capitalists more careful in their bets while ensuring sustainability”.
What are some of the things that you both are most excited about within these different trends, niches, and narratives you are actively evaluating?
Inal Kardan (Partner at Ton Ventures):
“Ton Ventures leverages Telegram as a key distribution channel, with a focus on Telegram-based products like games, SocialFi (e.g., Cabal Town), and financial products using Telegram Stars ("StarFi"). DeFi and DeFi infrastructure on TON remain compelling, as TON's DeFi ecosystem is in its early stages. BTCFi, bringing utility to Bitcoin, is also exciting. Skepticism surrounds AI agents, but niche AI-related products, especially Telegram bots for Web3, have potential..
Gurnoor Singh Narula (Placeholder VC):
“The focus is on infrastructure research across ecosystems, investing in foundational layers and ancillary services, believing ecosystems retain most value as markets mature.
Recent work examines sequencing protocols, fee mechanisms, and value capture in the transaction supply chain, questioning how long extractive models persist and when users demand value redistribution. There's also interest in Ethereum, Solana, and others for scalability and interoperability”.
Role of privacy and data in the evolution of AI:
Inal Kardan (Partner at Ton Ventures):
“Telegram prioritizes privacy by advocating for minimal or no data collection. If a product can function without collecting data, it should avoid doing so, and any necessary processing should happen on-device rather than on a backend. Most users do not care about privacy, allowing AI startups to collect extensive data, which is a bad practice. Investments are focused on teams that minimize data collection, like Grably in the Ton ecosystem, which processes data locally and only shares aggregated insights. Since data misuse is inevitable, the approach is to avoid collection, minimize it when necessary, and prioritize on-device processing”.
Gurnoor Singh Narula (Placeholder VC):
“There are a couple of dynamics to consider, grouped into verifiability and shared private state. On verifiability, if agents belong on-chain for payments or records, blockchain scaling must be faster, with many L1s and L2s planning to switch to zk-technology. On shared private state, proprietary third-party providers may white-label AI agents, leading to commoditization and user data dilemmas. Most users will accept data sharing, but user data should be centered on the user. For both user-agent and enterprise-agent interactions, a private shared state should allow computation, making this space worth exploring long-term”.
Conclusion:
The conversation explored key trends in crypto and AI, focusing on infrastructure, privacy, and verifiability. Speakers emphasized a cautious approach to crypto x AI, waiting for real value after the speculative phase. Major themes included leveraging Telegram’s ecosystem for Web3, scaling blockchain infrastructure, and privacy in AI interactions. The discussion highlighted interest in sustainable infrastructure, cautious AI integration, and privacy-focused solutions.